PhotoDeckHelp CenterBots and website protection
Robots (“bots”) are automated programs that visit websites, and they now account for more than half of all Internet traffic. Some robots are perfectly legitimate and well-behaved (think Google’s crawler), but a large share of them are rogue or simply unwanted: probing for security holes, aggressively scraping pages, or hammering servers recklessly - some botnets even leverage millions of hacked consumer devices to crawl the Internet. To protect your website against this abuse, PhotoDeck aims to prevent robots - except known legitimate ones, which are whitelisted - from accessing your pages, without hindering legitimate visitors.
How the antibot protection works
The antibot protection checks that a real browser - not a basic bot - is visiting your website. A legitimate visitor will at most briefly see a “security verification” page: it includes a hidden challenge that is automatically and quickly resolved by the visitor’s browser, without any captcha to solve. Once the check is passed, the visitor can browse freely without seeing that protection again.
Robots identified as outright abusive are not even given that chance: they are simply refused access to the protected pages.
Where the protection applies
The antibot protection is active on all pages of your website. It also protects the PhotoDeck admin space itself, and thereby your own PhotoDeck account.
In the Statistics page, the legitimate robots we know about are reported in their own section, separate from the Visitors stats
What the antibot is currently blocking
You can see what the antibot is dealing with right now under My business / Statistics: click on Wondering what the antibot is dealing with right now? to open a map showing the origin of the bad bots recently blocked on all PhotoDeck websites, and their share of global traffic.
Legitimate robots are whitelisted
Known legitimate robots (like Google’s crawler) are whitelisted: they can access and index your website as usual, and no configuration is needed on your side. The antibot protection therefore has no impact on your website’s SEO.
This protection will keep evolving: bot creators learn over time how to circumvent barriers, so new barriers have to be designed. It is a cat-and-mouse game, and we stay on it!
If image theft is a concern, make sure you have an adequate watermark on your images - please refer to the help on watermarks for more details!
FAQ
Do my clients have to solve a captcha to access my website?
No. The “security verification” page includes a hidden challenge that is automatically resolved by a legitimate visitor’s browser, usually without them noticing anything. There is no captcha to solve.
Will the antibot protection affect my Google ranking?
No. Legitimate robots like Google’s crawler are whitelisted and can index your website as usual. The protection only targets rogue robots.
A client reports being stuck on a “security verification” page
Passing the verification is automatic and normally takes only a moment. If a legitimate visitor remains blocked or sees the verification page over and over again, please contact support so that we can investigate.
Can I disable the antibot protection on my website?
No. The protection is active on all PhotoDeck websites, and there is nothing to configure or deactivate on your side.
My SEO tool reports errors (HTTP 429 or 5xx) when crawling my website
Automated tools that do not behave like a real browser can be blocked by the antibot protection. Legitimate search engine crawlers are whitelisted, but third-party tools are often not. If an SEO tool needs to crawl your website, contact support with the tool’s name and its IP ranges if you have them, so we can whitelist it.
Can I customize the “security verification” page?
No. The verification page is standard across all PhotoDeck websites and cannot be customized or removed.
A visitor using Microsoft Edge remains stuck on the “security verification” page
Edge’s “Enhanced Security” strict protection mode can prevent the hidden challenge from completing. Ask the visitor to set Edge’s security level to “Balanced” for your website, or to add your website to Edge’s allowed sites, then reload the page.
Image previews are missing when sharing links on Bluesky or WhatsApp
It is not possible to robustly identify and whitelist Bluesky or WhatsApp, so their crawlers can be presented with the antibot challenge and fail to resolve it. To share an image there, post the image itself with a link to the page.
My uptime monitoring service reports my website as down
Uptime monitors usually do not behave like a real browser, so they can be presented with the antibot challenge that they are unable to resolve, and report the website as down even though it is online. If you use a well-known monitoring service that publish their IP addresses, please contact support with a link to their IP address file. Otherwise please use a simpler check such as a ping instead of checking page content or HTTP responses.